The Deep
by Daisy If You Have
Summary: Michiru's house is haunted. It's been haunted for awhile now.


Michiru Kaioh did not believe in ghosts, but she had never found that her disbelief in something had reduced its capacity to harm her. Destiny. Vulnerability. Submission. Love. Yes, that one most of all.

Some cheesy movie Haruka had once loved had posited that a woman's heart was an ocean, and if such a thing were true, it was squalling tonight, and Michiru felt her stomach turn against the violence of each lurch. She feared she might drown in the depths of it.

And so it was halfway between fear of her own end and desire for it that she walked down the hallway to her old bedroom. The house shuddered in response to the touch of her feet on the hardwood, but it wasn't a shudder, it couldn't be, it was only the wind, the wind sweeping in the cracks of the old house and chilling it, blowing out the lightbulbs like candles to flicker, though of course a lightbulb could not be blown out, that was the electricity, the house was old, and that was all.

 _"Look at how much light there is!" She turned around in the hallway, the sunlight from the window catching her hair, gold flecks glittering against its usual ash. She grinned and turned back to Michiru, still standing on the staircase. "And the lights aren't even on."_

 _"I daresay it was built some time before electricity was strictly reliable." Her heels clacked up the last few stairs and she softly touched Haruka's hip. "I thought you might like it. It does have a bit of architectural drama."_

 _"Michiru, I love it." She put her arm around Michiru and kissed her temple. "Are we really gonna buy it?"_

 _"In an odd turn of events, for once I'm doing something my parents approve of, properly buying property." She rubbed Haruka's back. 'So, yes, your approval was my only reservation."_

 _"I think it's the most beautiful place I've ever seen."_

 _Michiru turned her face to the sun, the hallway warm and bright, each beam of light caressing her gently, embracing her. "Well my love, it belongs to you now."_

 _She squeezed Michiru's hand. "Us."_

No, Haruka had misspoken, then, it had never belonged to the both of them, it had only ever belonged to her, and the light that streamed in through the windows was her own. There was no greater proof of that than the hallway now, cloaked in shadows, the wind cold and lonely as it whipped through, the lights in the sconces barely able to illuminate her lost feet as she made her way down the hardwood path.

The room had been shut up for months, all of Haruka's clothes still hung in the closet, suits pressed and waiting to slide across lanky shoulders, ties crying out for her gentle caress as they slipped into a knot, sweaters with their softness now unnoticed. She understood these clothes best of all, beautiful shells waiting for Haruka to fill them.

She had shut her heart up in that room, and locked the door–such a wise thought, that generation had, that you could lock a door from the outside, to know that very often the things within were more dangerous than the things without. And so it had lay silent.

Until tonight.

Tonight the sea spray of the turbulent, storming ocean kicked itself into her nostrils, near drowning her on dry land with the strength of it.

She had awoke from her sleep, which, in and of itself, was not terribly unusual, even with the pills she took nowadays–modern medicine had not yet invented something strong enough to hide the banshee's wail of a human heart. She touched the sheets of the bedroom she now called her own, the firm mattress Haruka would have hated, and glanced about the room.

There was nothing there, and yet she could have sworn she heard a voice.

She had read about this, the illusions cast across one's mind in the space between sleep and waking, it was the commonest thing in the world. It was only that her mind had not yet awoken from slumber, still firing away into the void. And then, she heard it again, the cruelest sound in the world.

Haruka's laughter.

It was enough to rise her from the bed, make her swing the robe, the new silk that had never known the touch of Haruka's hand, across her shoulders, and it was following this siren's song across the waves of her heart that had lead her to the dark hallway, which seemed to creak and rock in the night as the wind battered against it.

She had thought about selling the home, once, twice, a dozen times, and yet, she had not been able to let it go. In dreams she saw it, sometimes, the lead cannonball tied to her ankle as she stood at the edge of the ship, a rough point in her back. It was tied so weakly, but she would not so much as move her foot to remove it.

But dreams were dreams, and she wondered if she might simply still be in one, pressed against the wall outside the room that was once theirs.

Maybe, she thought, allowing herself the vain hope she so often kept shuttered, the whole thing had been a dream. That day had never been rainy. Haruka had not been out picking up dinner. That car hadn't ran a red light. There was never the black streak of a dragged motorcycle, dotted with sweet and sour chicken like grim confetti. Her phone hadn't rung at all that night. She had only imagined going to the hospital. She had never heard that long, high note of Haruka's last heartbeat.

A gust hit the side of the house, and she could hear the groaning whine of the wood struggling against the storm. No, no she couldn't. The house was brick, it didn't sound like that, it did not weave and buckle with the waves.

She took another step toward the bedroom, and the door seemed to pulse with desire and longing. She knew what was behind the door. Nothing but a made up bed, the pillow on the right traitorously dipped as if her head still rested there. She had fluffed it a dozen times, but it always fell again, waiting. Her bright red Lightning McQueen coffee cup would still be on the side table.

"I eat losers for breakfast!" A faraway voice came down the hallway. "Also doughnuts. But this mug represents me, don't you think?"

Michiru shook her head. Just a memory, a cobweb from the vacation they'd shared. Haruka was dead and buried, had been for months, and anything she heard was only the sound of the wind, the sound of the ocean churning miles inland. She had tucked Haruka into her coffin herself, her blanket folded neatly at her side, in case she got cold.

But no, she suddenly thought, she hadn't buried Haruka at all. She was still locked up in their bedroom, and she could smell the stench of her rotting body, and nearly retched as it was carried into the hallway by a gust, as the sails began to tear away from the ropes somewhere far off.

That's why she couldn't sleep at night. It had been there, tormenting her, and she had locked the door and forgotten all about it like a careless child. She grabbed the key out of her robe pocket. She could have sworn she left that in the drawer downstairs, but it didn't matter now, she needed to get into the room, to get in there and drag Haruka's body out of it, she'd call a professional cleaning service in the morning, but this needed to happen now.

Thunder rumbled overhead as she stomped down the rest of the hallway, the vision of Haruka's now-wasted flesh in mind, bracing herself against it as she unlocked the door. The wind blew through the house and slammed up against the door, and Michiru struggled to open it, twisting the knob hard, her hair flying in the storm, the water flying up into her face.

 _It's just that the roof is leaking I'll call someone tomorrow but tonight I have to get her body out I have to get it out tonight TONIGHT._

The door gave way, and she bolted into the room, swinging the door so wide it banged against the wall.

"Jesus! Michi, you scared me."

The wind was still.

She lay on the bed, perched on her stomach over a car magazine like a child with a comic book. The coffee cup was not on the side table at all, but in her hand, a whiff of whipped cream peeking out of the top of it.

"Babe? What's wrong?"

Her face was softly lit, her long lashes framing her soft grey eyes, and Michiru nearly wept to see the unmarred lean frame of her body–not at all the way Michiru had last seen her, bruised and cut and bent at odd angles.

She moved her lips to speak, but no words came out.

Haruka set down her mug, and sat up. "Is it the storm? Bothering you?"

Michiru's head wavered weakly. "It..it must be." The still small voice in her head cried out that she must have had too much to drink, yes, that and the pills had been a terrible combination, she should go back to bed, and Michiru smothered it under the weight of her own want.

Haruka crawled to the edge of the bed and sat at it, drawing her arms around Michiru's waist and bringing her in.

She was so warm, but she couldn't be, she had touched Haruka's cold body in the coffin, and it had been–oh but it didn't matter now, her fingertips kissed Michiru's hips with their warmth through her silk robe, and she embraced that deep, dark peace within her.

Haruka smiled. "Just stay with me then."

She ran a hand through Haruka's hair, soft ash caressing her hand, pulling it in. "I can't." It was a weak protest. "I don't–"

Haruka kissed her wrist. "Of course you can." She set Michiru's hand back to her robe pocket, and Michiru was astounded to discover her bottle of sleeping pills, which she was sure were still in the desk in her new bedroom.

"Of course. I'm so silly." She felt the wind whip into her face, felt the sirens calling her to the deep, the voice at the back of her mind, the one who said nothing was real, getting smaller and smaller, crowded out by the thunder above.

"Naw." Haruka winked. "You just overthink stuff sometimes." She reached her long arm across the bed and picked up her hot cocoa. "Here."

The ocean whipped up beneath her, the rope still tied around her ankle. She had been wrong this whole time. She was a mermaid, and belonged to the sea. There had never been a sword at her back at all, but a warm hand, and it wasn't a cannonball, it was a tail, her tail, yes, it was the sky that suffocated her this whole time.

Her toes curled around the end of the plank, and she jumped.


End file.
